I see Movie Battles II as a lot more competitive and skill based than CS:GO or most any other game

[Onysfx]

MBII really needs an ingame tutorial to help new players get used to the game before they get in and die quickly. Many new players to MBII haven't even played JKA, let alone have any experience on the Quake 3 engine.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

MBII really needs an ingame tutorial to help new players get used to the game before they get in and die quickly. Many new players to MBII haven't even played JKA, let alone have any experience on the Quake 3 engine.

I've always wanted to do this, but creating a good one with what JKA allows us to do is pretty hard. We'd need one with in-game cinematics, voice overs, in-game popup menus, bot ai, etc. I'd rather make it a video. Problem with that being JKA only supports ROQ which maxes out at 512 pixels in the width and has a horrible compression ratio.

 

[jade]

Only the dueling can compete in terms of competitiveness. CSGO>>>>Open/PUGs that happen nowadays

Agreed, but that you can't really compare to any other game.

 

[Thawne]

Different target audiences, perhaps? Just like Total Annihilation vs. Starcraft thing from old times. The latter is plain dumb compared to the former (TA is hell competitive and exciting to play even today), but it is the latter that gets torunaments with bazzilions dollars given to more coordinated "clicker".

I wouldn't say Starcraft is plain dumb compared to TA. It's mainly that a) they focus on different parts of a strategy game (Starcraft, especially nowadays, is very micro-focused, whereas TA has a big macro component) and b) Blizzard tries to make games which are easy to get into - so they take out "upfront complexity". That being said, I like Supreme Commander 1 more than I like Starcraft when it comes to playing competitive.

When it comes to Movie Battles II, a lot of things just aren't very clear when you start up the game the first time and join a server. Even the basic "When does Force Push work?" takes some time to understand. Combined with all the different classes, weapons and so on it's probably very overwhelming for new players. In that case it's kind of comparable to something like TA since people have to get over the steep learning curve to be able to enjoy it - and a lot of them just quit earlier.

So yeah, some kind of tutorial (or maybe even video series) would probably be very helpful.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

MB2 competitiveness could be okay with more maps like Alderaan and Smuggler, but it still needs people who play it.

However if you're simply talking player scoreboards etc, I think tying forum accounts to the launcher etc could lead down a very interesting path, which I think could be worth exploring. It does require methods to ensure it's not possible to abuse the scoreboard however.

 

[MaceMadunusus]

MB2 competitiveness could be okay with more maps like Alderaan and Smuggler, but it still needs people who play it.

However if you're simply talking player scoreboards etc, I think tying forum accounts to the launcher etc could lead down a very interesting path, which I think could be worth exploring. It does require methods to ensure it's not possible to abuse the scoreboard however.

Honestly, we could attempt to linking MB to the steam API?

 

[Phelps]

Would it link & lock a nickname to a player?

 

[Ghost]

Hmh...Awesome

 

[Jiube]

Problem with that being JKA only supports ROQ which maxes out at 512 pixels in the width and has a horrible compression ratio.

Perhaps a tutorial in the launcher? It should not have such limitations, should it?

Honestly, we could attempt to linking MB to the steam API?

And what about those of us, who don't have their game linked to Steam, that don't use steam installation of JA?

My personal opinion, I'm against this whole idea. Reward is not worth the effort in my opinion. Skins is not what competetive is all about. If it is real competetive you seek, you should focus on fixing gameplay and balance.

 

[Cat Lady]

Combined with all the different classes, weapons and so on it's probably very overwhelming for new players. In that case it's kind of comparable to something like TA since people have to get over the steep learning curve to be able to enjoy it - and a lot of them just quit earlier.
(...)
So yeah, some kind of tutorial (or maybe even video series) would probably be very helpful.

Agreed, albeit Esc.->Library helps a lot, if you manage to convince newcomer to actually read it. I had high hopes for agentoo's instructional videos about sabering, (cause - IMO = it is most under-documented aspect of game, at least personally, I got what MBII saber combos are after just... 10+ years of gaming ) but it ended up in being one film ;(

/Cat Lady

 

[Phelps]

And what about those of us, who don't have their game linked to Steam, that don't use steam installation of JA?

What about login in launcher? With option to link Steam account. Might be a lot of job for nothing but.. I am kind of hinting at the idea of eradicating aliases.
But I guess I am of the minority of the guys who do not alias, so my idea won't be a favourite one.
Or, one could change his nickname in the game (some aliases are funny tbh), but his personal ID, assigned to him at the first login, would still be present, so admins know, who behaves like a moron.

 

[Revolver Ocelot]

Forced steam integration IN-GAME itself would be a bad idea theirs always the possibility that most of us have the pirated version of JKA after our discs slowly kicked the bucket. I don't see how linking the launcher to steam itself without steam having a game to launch would work unless you got mad scripting skills and fool steam into thinking you have JKA but that would be more trouble then its worth

 

[Phelps]

It was just an idea, since I am not a developer and I threw it out there without basic knowing of programming. Anyway, with the cost of JA on Steam, it feels rather sad and amusing to have a pirate copy, but no judging.

What about we forget linking to Steam now, what about linking forum account to some login (again, just an idea here) in the launcher? I think somebody already lurked around the thought of having some stats from the game being duplicated on forums. Click on profile and you see stats of the player.

Still, I am throwing unnecessary ideas for now, the main focus should be gameplay I guess, as Jiube stated. As for the installation and launching the game, that has been simplified as much as it can for newcomers. It's basically 100% easier than it used to be back in the day to get the game working.

Imo, it's all about PR now (if we are talking about getting new players), pre-release of TFA in cinemas. People are stoked and hyped. And this needs to be grabbed and squeezed as much as it can be.

 

[Revolver Ocelot]

we need advertisements at the Sunday football and forum linking sounds good

 

[Cat Lady]

What about login in launcher? With option to link Steam account. Might be a lot of job for nothing but.. I am kind of hinting at the idea of eradicating aliases.
But I guess I am of the minority of the guys who do not alias, so my idea won't be a favourite one.
Or, one could change his nickname in the game (some aliases are funny tbh), but his personal ID, assigned to him at the first login, would still be present, so admins know, who behaves like a moron.

Agreed, + - if we ever decide to abandon silly, old and bugged jamp.exe and focus on OpenJK, (free) MBII account could be used to detect and eliminate cheats.

/Cat Lady

 

[Taliesin]

I don't really like the idea of making MBII more competitive. Much of the game (In my experience, at least.) is just faffing about and doing silly junk like initiating a fistfight with Darth Vader as Porkins Glorious Hero Of The Rebellion or riding about on a dodongo (Not a dewback, it's obviously a dodongo, dewbacks aren't a thing.) and shooting things. Making it more competitive tends to make people far less interested in doing stupid things, from what I've seen. Besides, the community can be pretty toxic as it is, the players don't need much help in feeling 'better' than others.

All that said, I suck so hard at it that I could just be ranting and raving because people that are actually competent will get rewards for hard work, and I obviously deserve to get everything for free and for no work because I'm basically Jesus. /s
I also haven't played since it was all down, so everything could have changed dramatically and I might be trapped in 1985 again.

 

[Thawne]

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to have a global Scoreboard showing everyone's K/D ratio and score/round and so on. Like Taliesin already said, a lot of people (including me) try out silly stuff just to have some fun. Therefore I wouldn't put the competitiveness into just playing on a normal server.

Instead tournaments (that may include global scoreboard and so on) would fit much better.

Agreed, albeit Esc.->Library helps a lot, if you manage to convince newcomer to actually read it. I had high hopes for agentoo's instructional videos about sabering, (cause - IMO = it is most under-documented aspect of game, at least personally, I got what MBII saber combos are after just... 10+ years of gaming ) but it ended up in being one film ;(

Yup. I think one of the main problems of games like these is that people have to actually go and look for the information. The same way you don't just jump into EVE Online and fool around, you usually inform yourself and might even be reading long articles about what the hell is going on. Whereas in most popular (and easy to get into) games the players are smoothly lead into them. I think this is actually one of the reasons why "Progression and Unlock systems" work out that well. If you jump into Battlefield (or even the new Battlefront) you're not faced with having 50 weapons that each have 12 upgrades directly. You just have 3 weapons and you don't need to check every single weapon and to find out what's the best for you. You just jump into it and learn it on the fly.

I also agree on using OpenJK. Especially helps the linux users here.

 

[hleV]

Ranked and unranked servers?

 

[LoU]

I implemented TOP stats on duel server some time ago, showing top 3 players on server every 10 minutes + live stats on site. But for open? We would have to rework score points system.

 

[Phelps]

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't want to have a global Scoreboard showing everyone's K/D ratio and score/round and so on. Like Taliesin already said, a lot of people (including me) try out silly stuff just to have some fun. Therefore I wouldn't put the competitiveness into just playing on a normal server.

I'm like the worst player ever who entered this game. Sucked for ten whole years. And I wouldn't mind some scoreboard, because honestly, if you want this game to survive, you need to add something interesting for newcomers. And I'm afraid ego loathing in form of some score board is the way. It's not competitive, it's just stats of the player showing on his profile on forums. This game won't survive long on people like you and me, old-timers doing funny stuff. Old-timers who are in it just for the community.

I try silly stuff too and I could give a crap about how it ruins my stats on profile. If you don't care about score, then you should be above it. If stats ever be implemented, then you can very well ignore them. If you are in it for the fun, why would you care.

This seems to me, like you got some ego loathing in you too, if you care how would your stats look like. It's not like the stats would make you quit playing for fun. Excuses.

I am the last one who would want this game to be competitive. It would ruin it for me I guess. MBII was never about this for me. But it needs something to keep newcomers interested in playing.

PS: Read it more carefully, the division into competitive and normal server would solve it. It's a neat compromise.